Google UK Drop UK Country Filter?

In an ongoing and constantly updated WebmasterWorld thread, it appears some people are reporting major shifts in Google UK. People are saying that the search results dramatically changed. But some suspect that the UK specific filter that makes Google UK, umm, UK specific, was turned off.

Here are some of the reports in the thread:

I have noticed that all of a sudden my rankings are back to when caffine done it's first roll out. It was temporary but this time I have noticed that big sites have dropped as well but in other industries. The .co.uk rankings are very similar to .com. Anyone else see this?

not sure what they have done today in the UK but my traffic on one site has gone crazy, i hope they dont turn it back.

Senior member, InternetHeaven said that Google does occasional flip the UK filter switch off. He said in response to the UK results looking like US results:

This happens from time to time. It's like the UK filter is turned off for a bit. Worst still is the AU infiltration! Every so often the UK Google results are crammed with AU results - now that's always a dark day for us...